I have 30k cash money to put into a home. I make slightly less than the median income in my city. I have a “merged credit score” of 680, which if not great is not real bad (so I’m told by my Realtor, who I also have some issues with, but that’s another thread). That score is with an error on the report of an unpaid $2500 bill – and I have a letter from that creditor acknowledging the mistake and stating it should be deleted from my credit record in the next 30 days. The only other detrimental items on my report are some late loan payments more than 4 years old, all of which were paid in full. I have less than a thousand dollars total debt. But I seem to have run into Loan Officers From Hell.
I met #1 before I even looked for a home – my Realtor steered me to him. He collected a bunch of info from me and put it into a computer, and he told me “I’ve qualified you for a WHEDA loan” (it’s a WI state program for 1st time home buyers). The next week, when I found a place and had my offer accepted, he told me “Well, I DID examine their criteria and determine that you qualify”, but he never actually gave my name or any other data to the agency. And suddenly he told me about more conditions to this loan, like I have to pay a penalty if I sell it in the next ten years. Goodby #1.
Numbers 2 and 3 were a tag team duo from my Credit Union. where I’ve been a member for more than 10 years and never so much as bounced a check. I had already been “pre-qualified” through an online application (pending resolution of the above mentioned $2500 debt). I made an offer Friday which was accepted on Saturday. On Monday, I went to the company that reported the debt to the credit agency, straightened it all out and got a letter so stating.
On Tuesday (also my birthday) I spent half the day meeting with them and providing every document they asked for – pay stubs, last year’s W2, condo association papers, offer and acceptance document, and I can’t even remember what else – they said they had everything they needed.
Except for… They needed to know whether the property was “compliant” or not… something to do with the longevity of the association and the occupancy rate of the units. At first they assured me that if the property were more than a few years old, it would surely be on their “compliant” or “non-compliant” lists, but lo and behold this 25 year old association wasn’t on either list, and they asked me to authorize a $75 charge for a review of the condo papers to determine compliance. A loan on a non-compliant property was a quarter point higher than for a compliant one. Also, they told me that while the error was on my credit report, they would have to charge me an interest rate as if the report was entirely correct. They told me they would lock in that day’s rates based on my at the time score and assumung the property was non-compliany, but if my credit report was repaired or the review said it was 'compliant"before closing, they would lower my rate accordingly. The 2 things together going my way would lower my rate by more than a point.
So a few more days go by, I pay $300 for a home inspection. Then the Realtor tells me we need a letter of commitment from my lender, and the seller wanted to move up the closing date if I was agreeable (which I was). So we both try to reach the loan officers.
3 more days pass and despite repeated messages, I don’t get a call back. The Realtor is pissed and steers me to yet another mortgage broker, #4, yesterday. This guy strikes me as so sleazy and cavalier that I don’t even want to meet with him. He practically guarantees me a rate under 6% and he doesn’t even ask my income. So I put off meeting with him and start asking co-workers for other suggestions of places to check. And today I finally get a call back from my credit union guy. I ask what I can do to speed up the process. He says, “Well, you can come in an fill out the loan application and pay the $300 fee so we can get this process started.”
Started? They had already told me that they would arrange for an appraisal (that I would pay for in closing). They had already asked me to authorize the document review for $75. No one had mentioned an additional loan application OR a fee for it, which I would have paid without question 10 days ago. Now they tell me that they can’t do the document thing until they have a “formal application”. Now they tell me the letter from the creditor about the $2500 error is insufficient – it didn’t specify that the debt was “satisfied”. No, it wasn’t “satisfied” beccause it didn’t exist. The letter DOES say that the item would be deleted from my credit report, but today that’s not good enough.
So I talk on the phone to another loan officer (#5) at the bank my boss reccommended, the “corporate financial partner” of my employer, so our employees get a special deal on closing costs. By this time I can give her very precise answers to all her questions over the phone, all the same stuff about income and blah blah. I even give her my SSN and authorize her to do a credit report, even though I’ve already told her the exact score. She quotes me a rate of 5.7% for a 30 year fixed rate over the phone, and we make an appointment for this afternoon.
Just before I leave work, I call her again and suggest that I could stop at home and pick up all this documentation, but if I did so I would be maybe 15 minutes late. She says I can bring everything next week, so just come one by at the agreed time and we’ll do the paperwork. And I head out to the bank.
And when I get there she tells me that she can’t offer me ANY 30 year fixed rate loan. “The seconday market would not be comfortable purchasing your loan”, she tells me. But she can offer me a 5 year balloon “note”. A couple of years down the line I could refinance to a conventional mortgage, she told me, assuming I made regualr payments on this in the meantime. She must have known all this when I talked to her 10 minutes earlier, and she let me come in knowing that she couldn’t or wouldn’t offer me the loan she quoted me in the morning.
Moving the closing date up seems a distant dream – now I’m worried that the whole deal might collapse if I can’t meet that contracted clising date of 10/20. I’m told it can be very difficult to get an appraisal in less than 30 days. But it was one of these assholes who told me this, and I am completely out of trust.
I’m going to have to take off time from work and go at this loan thing full tilt next week, and I have absolutely NO enthusiam for it any more, or trust left for anything I hear. I’m actually thinking of giving up my 2K earnest money and walking on the deal because I’m so totally disgusted by the whole fuckin’ mess. 2K doesn’t seem like an excessive amount to pay to avoid more hell like the last few days.
